


reverberate hills

by dreamweavernyx



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:58:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamweavernyx/pseuds/dreamweavernyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are hazy gaps in his memory, and Bran wonders if he'll ever figure out what they used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reverberate hills

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place several years after _Silver on the Tree_.
> 
> Originally meant to be a 100-word drabble, grew too much to be contained within.

Bran Davies doesn’t remember too clearly the last time Will Stanton came to Wales, just vague recollections of three siblings and plenty of sightseeing and a short boy with red-brown hair and a curious half-smile.

 

He’s fresh out of high school when Rhys pops by the Davies’ farm, hair wind-ruffled as he steps out of his battered Jeep.

 

“Da says Will’s coming to stay for a bit,” he informs Bran, no-nonsense as usual. “He thought you might like to know.”

 

~

 

Will whirls back into his quiet life two and a half weeks later, the same red-brown hair hanging over his face but taller and lankier than Bran remembers. He greets Owen with ease as though this isn’t the first time in years he’s seen either of them, and then Bran’s pulling him down into a headlock (because Will’s now taller than him, damn it) and mussing up his hair.

 

“Welcome back, English boy,” Bran says solemnly, when Will’s done choking and spluttering at the indignity of it all. “Forgetful old one, aren’t you, never writing or anything.”

 

Will flashes him a quick look, laced with something complex Bran can’t really decipher, but then it’s gone and an easy grin sits in its place.

 

“Shut up,” he says in Welsh, but his accent’s awful and Bran can’t help the twitch of his mouth as Will mangles his language. He ends up spending the next ten minutes teaching Will to say to correctly, and somehow feels a sense of déjà vu as though he’s done this before. (He might have, his memories of Will’s last visit are strangely hazy.)

 

~

 

He ends up dragging Will to Aberdyfi on day three – they’ve both gotten bored of staring at sheep and throwing sticks for Bran’s sheepdog – and they sit on a little grassy knoll overlooking the valley, dangling their legs off the edge and looking out at the mountain range.

 

Carn March Arthur’s nearby, but Will seemingly doesn’t have any interest in tourist attractions, so they walk on past to the echoing mountains. There are little children yelling down below, projecting their voices to hear their shouts echo into the valley, obviously rather thrilled with this novelty.

 

Soon enough, the children leave, and Bran’s left staring out in silence, the wind rushing past his ears and blowing snow-white bits of his fringe into his glasses.

 

“Say, Will, have you tried out the echo before?”

 

Will looks at him funny, his mouth quirking in a little half-smile.

 

“Yeah, kinda,” he says eventually. “Sang. Once.”

 

Bran’s eyebrow raises. He vaguely remembers Will being a soprano (he doesn’t remember how he knows, that bit’s a little fuzzy in his mind), but he knows he would have remembered if he’d been around when Will sang to the echoing valley.

 

“Do it,” he prompts. “I want to hear. Unless, of course, your voice has gone and cracked in your old age.”

 

It’s a challenge in disguise, and Bran knows that Will recognizes it, if the glint in his eye is any sign.

 

“ _Old_ , he says,” Will mutters under his breath, and glances furtively around as though to check if nobody else is listening before he opens his mouth.

 

A soprano Will may have been back then, but he’s matured into a lower range (countertenor, Bran muses, because some notes are definitely too high for a tenor’s range) since then. The song he sings is strange and haunting, lilting words and a melody that’s somehow vaguely familiar to Bran’s ears and yet very, very foreign.

 

Involuntarily, Bran shivers as the music washes over him, reverberating through the valley, growing ever complex as the mountains sing back to Will in mournful echoes. It almost feels like he’s seeing double, watching a much shorter, younger round-faced Will sing the same song as he watches in stunned silence.

 

Images flash in his mind’s eye, too quick for him to catch them and retain in his short-term memory, but achingly familiar, as though he’s seen them before but _just can’t remember where_ : a large white dog; a horse’s skeleton, empty grin set in its skull; a sword glowing as though it was made from light; a tall tree, silver blossoms opening from a branch at its very top.

 

It’s all very curious, and as the last notes of Will’s song echo back to them on the wind, Bran wonders if _something_ happened several years ago that granted him any sort of selective amnesia.

 

Will looks lighter, as though singing to the mountains has taken an invisible weight off his shoulders.

 

“Shall we go? I’m hungry,” he says to Bran, scrambling to his feet and offering a hand to pull Bran up.

 

Brushing aside the lingering déjà vu, Bran grabs the offered hand and staggers upright.

 

“You’re always hungry,” he shoots back, and heads off towards the village, not looking back when Will makes an indignant noise.

 

~

 

Bran Davies doesn’t remember too clearly the last time Will Stanton came to Wales, but he has a feeling something important happened, something he can’t quite remember.

 

(But he’ll leave the figuring out for another time.)

 

 

 

_end._


End file.
